Four years! Triangle House University, anyone?! I jest, but for real, it’s mind-boggling to think that we launched the Triangle House Review four years ago. It feels like yesterday, and also like 100 years ago. January of 2018 – I don’t have to say it, but I will anyway, pre-pandemic, beforetimes, etc.

But good things have happened in those four years too, at least for Triangle House if not the world. We’ve published so many amazing writers, expanded our editorial staff, hosted events, panels, and developed a network of geniuses – friends of the house, thank you, we couldn’t have done it without you.

This is a special issue: our January issues always are, in a way, but we’re doing something new with this one: Our first double issue. What! That’s right, we’re breaking our usual format of one essay, one piece of criticism, one story, one poem, and one interview to do two of each for the first time. Why? Well first, why not! But mostly, it’s because we just had such an abundance of incredible work coming our way, and we wanted to get more of it into the world this month. Since we don’t publish every month anymore (we’re on something of an every other month-ish schedule, by which I mean, we aim for six issues per year but sometimes it’s four, sometimes it’s eight…) it means that we end up with a backlog of incredible pieces that have to sit in the holding pen for Far Too Long. This special double issue is one way of dealing with that sadness, that there is so much great work in the world and we simply cannot publish all of it. And, it’s simply fun!

So per usual, thank you for reading, and thank you for following us on this crazy little journey we call LIFE (of a lit mag.)

We’re trying to make a tradition of the editors sharing their favorite books they read each year in a year-end post, but as things tend to do these days, it got away from us in December. So we’re doing it as the letter from the editors for January :) I’m sure you understand. Without further ado…

Monika

This year I joked that I was in my old dad phase of reading. I'm reading a lot of history and biography about World War II. It's not actually funny, my jokes or this kind of reading, and I've also often felt relieved not to be commuting with these books visible to the world anymore. The covers are bleak, filled with Nazi imagery, and the colors black, red, and white. Normally, I gravitate toward novels. This year, I read several 700 page volumes of non-fiction. Normally, my non-fiction reading breaks a pattern, pulls me out of a rut, and reinvigorates me. (There is nothing, to me, like reading a 10,000 word piece of reported, narrative journalism.) This year, novels did that for me instead.

I realized that I was researching a new project, and assigned myself a reading list, (I've never done this before...) which I suspect will take up much of next year's reading as well. It feels good to have this list, and cross things off of it, because part of my problem lately is hating to choose.

I feel so much pressure in picking a book or a movie to read next, and I don't know why. What would be the worst thing if I didn't like what I chose? I find myself in a stasis of not reading, of revisiting the same TV shows, just to avoid choice. So this list can do the choosing for me for a while, and that gives me a sense of relief. 

I was proud to put down two novels I hated from the first lines this year, and spent a lot of time thinking about what I had just read instead of rushing to the next book. I am hoping to do that more, and with my child back in school this Fall, I felt a welcome rush of brain capacity that I hadn't felt in over a year. 

Poetry: The Copenhagen Trilogy 

I know this is a poet's memoir, not poetry, but poets writing whatever they want is one of my favorite things to read. I have rarely, if ever, been as surprised by a book as I was by the third act of this trilogy. There is something to be said for any work that can surprise me, as I think of myself as being very good at predicting narrative. Usually, books that surprise me do so by making me feel something intensely, but Ditlevsen's memoir just stunned me; I felt numb until I finished and then couldn't stop thinking about it. (Thank you, Bryan, for PROMISING you will read this book as my birthday present this year!)

Non-fiction: Warsaw, 1944

One of the things that has made me so addicted to reading World War II books is the feeling I can't shake that I am actually reading about now. I feel I have a whole new understanding of the current world, in a way I can describe over a lunch, highjacking the conversation and dragging it down in a way I can't imagine anyone would enjoy. (I'm sorry.) This book taught me so much I didn't know about World War II, the Cold War, and, importantly for me, Poland's role in both, which was, destruction and then effacement. The American school system teaches you so much, and repeats so much, about this time in history, but never once has the positioning of the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War been explained to me like this. I will always be grateful to this book. (Thank you, Miranda Popkey, for sending me my copy so many years ago.)

Novel: Lee & Elaine

Last year, in December, I moved out of Brooklyn. That's not the way I saw it at the time, but it ended up being true. I didn't expect to, a year later, still be living in Springs, NY, where this novel is set. I loved this book, not just because I recognized my new home in its every word, but because I love books about artists. (Because I will never feel like one, and I admire them so much...) Fragmented, frankly sexual and intellectual, and centered around a cemetary I drive by often, Lee & Elaine felt timeless and classic, and set my mind in a questioning direction that let to a Fall of creative regeneration for me. (Thank you, Emily Gould, for recommending it to me.)

Alexandra Tanner, Fiction Editor

My favorite things I read this year were SPEEDBOAT, A TOUCH OF JEN, ELEGY FOR IRIS, and AGATHA OF LITTLE NEON. I didn’t read very much, but only because I watched probably 20,000 hours of TikToks and rewired my brain forever. My favorite TikToks of the year are one of a woman going “Who named our toes that? They did a good job. Toes. They would be called toes. They would name themselves toes if they could.” and one of a dog dressed in a person’s clothes looking at itself in the mirror while the voicemail about being yourself from Frank Ocean’s “Blonde” plays in the background and one where a girl is drinking out of a sink and over her face are the words “me at 3am drinking sink water bc I’m thirsty, pretending I’m a little peasant girl living in medieval times drinking water from the river.” These aren’t even that funny now that I’m watching them again and typing about them. I kept thinking I’d write something scathing and deep about TikTok and publish it somewhere great, but at the end of the day, it’s just videos. Next year I won’t watch as many of them, but that won’t make me a better person.

Becca Schuh, Editor-at-large

I did this fun little thing in 2021 called ‘forget to read physical books, just listen to audiobooks and vibe.’ I really can’t recommend it enough, you can give up on the persistent harassment of not being able to concentrate enough to finish physical books while also not falling behind on your dreaded Goodreads goals. I still read a few physical books, obviously, but my reading this year was HEAVILY influenced by my audiobook consumption, so my favorite books were as well. Here goes…

Fiction

As part of my ongoing descent into full-on psychosis, I started listening to thrillers on audiobook in maybe…April, and I simply never stopped. At a certain point I was listening to four per week. I am back down to a normal amount of listening now, but the heavy weeks were quite the mental adventure. 

I simply had too many favorites to choose one, but here are a few of my tops: False Witness by Karin Slaughter, The Silent Patient by Alex Michaeldes, and The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica. As for literary fiction, the only ones I read and liked were Animal by Lisa Taddeo and Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. 

Nonfiction 

I read plenty of good bougie nonfiction in 2021, but as with 2020, I simply have to throw all that out the window, and shout out something absurd: The best nonfiction book I read this year was Breakup Bootcamp by Amy Chan. I had a breakup last February, and I did NOT want to be miserable and pathetic during the horrible pandemic winter, so I got myself to Barnes & Noble and purchased every passable pop-psy breakup book I could find. Most of them were obviously meh, but that was the point of buying eight: one was bound to be a hit and cure me. This may sound ridiculous, to hope I could simply cure myself through self-help books and willpower, but…it worked. I got myself a hotel room in Manhattan, (people always ask me how I afforded this and I’m like, come on, haven’t you ever done something dumb with your credit card…) I went on walks, I took a bath EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, and anytime I got sad, I picked up one of the breakup books and forced myself to read a chapter. And…I healed :) So even though I still had a shitty year post-breakup (death, destruction, fights, losing jobs, the pandemic, you know the drill) I at least had a shitty year in which I was not upset about some loser I dated during the pandemic. :) 

Poetry

I didn’t read any full books of poetry this year. I suck! I read poems, sure, but no full books. I’ll fix this in 2022! I mostly reread poems by Anne Sexton from my copy of her collected poems. “It is June. I am tired of being brave.” from The Truth The Dead Know was def the line of my year! 

Thea Anderson, Assistant Editor

Nonfiction

Tyina L. Steptoe’s Houston: Culture and Color in A Jim Crow City. While the Texas Board of Ed. was busy trying to rewrite history this year, I savored the peeling back of myth that the lone star state was exempt from some of the ugliest parts of our history. Really, it had me fall in love with my home all over again. 

Fiction

I never thought I’d be as vested in the dating lives of 4 singles as I was by the end of Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You but it was the reprieve I needed. My favorite part? The email correspondence between Alice and Eileen is rich with their inner worlds, overflowing with contemplations of the “civilization” collapse and who to take as a wedding date. It’s like Rooney has hacked the 30-year-old brain.

Poetry

Last year, I craved old comforts. Probably because of AppleTV’s “Dickinson”, which I did watch to fall asleep to, but I found myself going back to the poet I discovered in the 7th grade. Relish such classics as Because I could not stop for death, and relive lesser-known hits.